


Made to measure

by antennapedia



Series: Owned [7]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Clothing Porn, Cufflinks, Dom/sub, F/M, Penis Measuring, Tailoring, Ties & Cravats, windsor knot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 21:32:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7378156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antennapedia/pseuds/antennapedia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara thinks Malcolm's suits are terrible and does something about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Made to measure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [levendis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/gifts).



Malcolm bowed Clara over the threshold and into his home, with a little bit of a predatory smile on his face. Well, not predatory. That was reserved for her. Anticipatory. They'd had a nice dinner out and a bit of modern theater that he'd enjoyed insulting for her afterward in the cab, and now they were heading upstairs for what Malcolm considered to be the main event of his week: he was going to be on his knees, and he was going to be begging, and maybe he'd be coming. And whatever else he felt, he was going to be happy about it.

Into the house, door locked, upstairs to his bedroom. Time for the fun. Malcolm stuck his hands into his jacket pockets and fidgeted. He was starting to feel nerves about it. Clara was looking at him, which was normal, and shaking her head, which was not.

"Yeah?" Malcolm said. "Something you need?"

"Your trousers."

"What about my trousers?"

"Are you hard right now?"

"Fuck me, that's direct. I'm the one who asks cunts that, not you."

"Well, are you?"

His ears burned. "Fair way toward it, yeah."

"And it's completely invisible."

"That's the fucking point. I'm fucking invisible. Nobody looks at me. Nobody fucking thinks about me until I'm on them, finger in their fucking chest, teeth in their throat."

"People were looking at you tonight. Taking photos of you. Again."

"Of _us_. The fact that we're out together for the third week in a row. Fucking pap cunts."

"And you're going to look awful on those shots."

"What?"

"Your suits are terrible."

Malcolm spun around and waved his hands in the air. "They are fucking not terrible! This one is Paul Smith, I'll have you know."

"My point."

"Cost me nearly a thousand quid!"

"Off the rack. Spendy, yeah, sure, but not quality. Not fitted. Hangs on you like rags on a scarecrow. You need some bespoke suits."

Malcolm felt a spike of outrage that he swallowed, because it was Clara, and Clara always looked amazing. He had no idea where she got her clothes, to be honest. "Bespoke? What the fuck?"

"You need to get yourself some proper suits made. So you can stand toe to toe with the likes of the men you'll be dealing with next."

"I'm not an inbred cunt like Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, who is that no matter how often he squashes his bollocks on a bicycle seat."

"No," Clara said, and her eyes were narrowed in a way that signaled her brain was working, working hard. And her brain, Malcolm knew, was of the first water. Fucking glittering. "If you're fencing with the likes of Boris, don't you want to quietly match him in the intangibles?"

"The intangibles?"

"Your shirtcuffs are too short. You have no shoulders at all and your suits play it up. You do have a flat stomach but nobody would ever know. And once your shirt had a gap in it that showed me your belly. Which, let's face it, I liked peeking at, but I don't want this happening in the office. And your trousers are a size too big. Too baggy. Badly fitted."

"Too baggy? I need room for the boys, you know." Malcolm touched his belt and tugged. He did hate being confined. And he'd lost weight recently, so maybe she was onto something, but damn, he felt humiliated right now.

"Yes, you do, but you need discreet room for them. Just enough room for them. You take a good look at Lord Nicholson next time you meet with him, and note if he has room."

"Not fucking into staring at other men's tackle, thanks, darling," Malcolm said. "Bespoke. Pots of money."

"You have money."

"I put it away for my old age. Spend it on nice holidays with you. Don't spend money on clothes. That's for women."

"Oh?"

He rubbed his chin. "I assume you do. You always look fucking gorgeous. The dress you're in tonight. The stockings. Worth it, whatever you paid."

"Not to mention the shoes," Clara said, but he could hear she was pleased by his flattery. Which was good, because it was sincere. "You don't want to compete with me?"

"Can't compete with you," he said to her. "Don't even want to."

But it bothered him. It was like a burr stuck under his collar, the idea that he wasn't beating them at their own game with dress. He knew the Eton and Harrow club despised the likes of him: education paid by the state, a regional accent and worse a _Glaswegian_ accent. He was supposed to say "what" and "sorry" and he didn't. Every time he opened his mouth he told them he wasn't as good as they were. He was trash. He was supposed to be a psychotic danger, a bit of rough imported to do dirty work that they wouldn't, so he was as they expected him to be. He was their bit of rough. He kept them off-balance with his tongue, with completely inappropriate and unexpected obscenity, and he browbeat them into doing their fucking jobs. His brain was, he knew, twice as fast as theirs, no matter what kind of education they'd had and however many drinking clubs they'd belonged to at Eton.

They paid him, and they despised him, and Clara was right and he still fucking couldn't.

"Clara," he said, and touched her shoulder. "The idea of doing what they do fills me with fucking rage. I want to smash windows and throw molotov cocktails and burn it all down. Write the headlines for it now: spin doctor nicked after slaughtering dozens of aristos in Savile Row."

"Yeah, I thought so. I have another idea. Strip."

"Strip?"

"Do I need to remind you what this night is about?"

Clara cocked an eyebrow at him and Malcolm realized he'd missed a cue. "Oh, fuck, yes, of course, fuck me." And his hands tore at his tie, which he now realized she regarded as less than quality. And his shirt, maybe that was shit, too. It was a bit large around the middle. His trousers she'd specifically called out as bad, which made him cringe. They were the best he'd ever owned, which was why he was wearing them on a Friday night dinner and theater date with his mistress. Fucking miserable to think she didn't like them, because he'd failed if so. He wasn't the sort of submissive fuck who liked being a lowly worm. He wanted to make her proud to have him at her side. He was sick-makingly proud of her, to be honest, and he wanted the feeling to be mutual.

He stood before her, nude and hard, with his unworthy clothing kicked into a corner of the bedroom. Shit. Did she want him at a gym lifting weights instead of playing squash on the odd weekend? He'd never picked up anything heavier than a blackmail file folder in his life.

"Stand here," she said, and she pointed to the center of his bedroom carpet. "Feet at shoulder width. Hands by your sides."

Malcolm obeyed uneasily. "What's this about?"

Clara held up something to him. Malcolm blinked. Yellow tape. Ticks all along it. Dressmaker's measure. "The fuck?"

"I'm going to buy you clothes. But I am going to take your measurements first."

"But--"

"Don't make me angry."

"Sorry. I-- yeah, sorry. Tell me what to do."

"Just hold still."

She pulled a chair over to him, and Malcolm resolutely looked away. He didn't fucking comment on Clara's height, not if he valued having an unbruised arse. To be honest, some nights he valued the reverse. But tonight he kept his jaw clenched and contained himself to holding out an arm when she wanted to stretch the tape along it. Tonight he was feeling off-balance and uncertain what she was up to. Tonight he felt like a right cunt. There he stood, arms out, legs slightly spread, while Clara held a dress-maker's measure against him in the strangest fucking places. Around his waist, yeah, sure, that he expected. Across his shoulders. Around his chest at tit level, which reminded him uncomfortably that Clara liked pinching his tits hard enough to bring him to tears. Uncomfortably? Maybe that wasn't the word. His cock twitched, dangling there out in front of him, all hard and heavy and conspicuous.

He was conscious of his body in ways he rarely was. He was skinny cunt, yes, she'd told him that. No time to eat. No interest in food, really. No hair to speak of, and he'd never learned if she liked that or not. The sweat was trickling down his side, of course, from sheer nerves, the way it always did on their nights together. He suddenly worried about whether he stank after a day rampaging around yelling. He hadn't had time to shower. Realistically, no, he didn't stink, because he hadn't worked up much of a sweat, and Clara had never shown any signs of minding his sweat, and fuck him, he was distracting himself from this because he was hard and Clara was touching him. Measuring along the inside of his thigh, from his arse-crack to his ankle. From his ballsack to his ankle. Around his thigh.

He swallowed. Did he fucking measure up? Did he compete? Were his balls big enough for her? Was his prick thick enough? He'd never worried about this shite before, always thought he'd had enough cock for any woman, but now she fucking knew exactly how much there was because she was holding a fucking measuring tape along the underside. Her hands were on him. He went very still, because her hands near his balls could be dangerous, and at best they were a fucking tease.

"No fucking tailor needs to know how long my cock is," he said.

"Nope. I wanted to know."

"Fuck me. _Fuck_ me."

She laughed at him and damn him, he got even harder. And of course she didn't tell him how big it was, the minx, and damned if he was going to ask. The next thing she measured was the circumference of the base of his cock, exactly where a cock ring sat, and Malcolm was distracted by thoughts of cock rings. Clara liked them. He liked them. Maybe she was measuring him for tighter rings than ones she'd put on him thus far. Metal ones? Cages. Fuck, fuck, fuck, that was distracting.

"Okay," she said.

Malcolm relaxed and scrubbed at the back of his neck. "Yeah, okay. What are you, um?"

"That's it. Your part is over. When the clothes arrive, wear them. That's all."

"You shouldn't--"

"I can afford it. After that last bit of currency speculation I did, I can afford it. So shut up."

A couple of weeks later the boxes arrived, delivered by courier. Fucking lorry-load of boxes, enough tissue paper to drown a cat. Some of it was Paul Smith, yes, but also Kilgour, and the subtlety of the pinstripe in the jacket made Malcolm's eyebrows raise. Clara must have done better with her currency speculation than he'd guessed. She'd made some rather acid predictions to Tom about policy results, which Tom had ignored, and this must have been her little demonstration to herself that she knew her business. To them all. Not that he'd doubted her.

Malcolm tried on the Kilgour shite. The wardrobe was complete, from skin out. And yes, one of the packages had included a fucking metal ring, in a discreet black box, on velvet. Stainless, with her name inscribed on the outside. Property of. Yes, yes, he was.

He left that in the bedside drawer for her to put on him with her own hands, and dressed himself in the quietest of the three suits she'd given him. Charcoal gray. Perfect fucking white shirt, fucking ridiculous across the back, cuffs that came exactly down to where they needed to be. Cufflinks in another of the quiet boxes, little black dots that he rather liked. This one came with a selection of five ties marked as belonging to it. He took the silk one-- a lighter gray, slick in his hands, and tied himself a windsor with only the least lip-biting. He stood before the mirror and stared at himself. Gray wool. Hanging perfectly. Shoulders, waist, and a trousers that clung to his legs in surprising ways without confining him. Yes, he had room for his bollocks. No, he didn't need to cinch it all in at the waist with a belt so his fucking trousers stayed up.

He looked fucking amazing.

He said nothing about it all day, though from the glint in Sam's eye he could tell she noticed. She did brush him off very quietly before sending him off to his weekly with Tom, not that this was unusual, but Malcolm stood straighter than usual for it. It was fucking amazing to think about: he was wearing something that cost more than a fortnight's rent in Knightsbridge, and he felt like he could gnaw out the poxy livers of the elite with his teeth, he was so fucking fly.

He kept his trap well shut on that topic, though, and open on the usual topics of the fuckwittery of the bawbags Tom had chosen to lead the less meaningful ministries, which was his perennial downfall. When they had porridge for brains they caused no end of trouble, and Malcolm had no fucking idea why Tom kept picking senior morons instead of up-and-coming juniors. They bickered about this amiably, and Malcolm was pleased to note that Tom paid his suggestions more heed than usual. Malcolm didn't make them often; he was content to enforce not lead, which made his occasional push more powerful than it might have been if he'd been popping off every day.

And maybe Clara was right. Maybe he was sending off different signals now. Surely Tom had known him long enough not to care about things like this? Was Tom that shallow?

Malcolm walked back from Number 10 pondering that question. Well, not the question itself. Tom _was_ that shallow. What the fuck did it mean? It was a lever, that's what it meant. A fucking crank Malcolm could turn. If he wanted to. All he had to do was choke down his loathing.

When Sam brought him his afternoon cuppa, he took a moment to text Clara and ask her to dinner. It was a Thursday, not their usual night for it, but he was inspired. He wanted to see her. Show her. Fuck it, he took a selfie of his cuff emerging from the jacket sleeve and texted that to her, moments after the invitation.

 _nice 7pm yours_ was her reply, and Malcolm breathed out a sigh of relief. Then a moment later _I expect you to have my ring ready_ which made him sweat all over again. But it was a good sweat. Best kind.

Malcolm shot his perfect cuffs and smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> For levendis, who prompted thusly: "id-y prompt: "Owned"-verse, Clara takes Malcolm's measurements extremely precisely for a suit that actually fits. bonus points for Malc being awkward (but also kind of enjoying himself) walking around lookin' fly but also sans all that 'don't look at me' crap baggy camouflage."


End file.
